Elizabeth Warren Breaks Down the Biggest Trump Scandal You Haven't Heard About 9FEB17

THE CFPB / Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is under attack by the drumpf/trump-pence administration, and may be eliminated, if people don't demand congress protects it and keep it fully funded. Wall Street and the bank-financial cabal hate the CFPB, that should be proof enough we need to fight for it. This is class warfare, the American people vs the 1% and corporate greed. +Senator Elizabeth Warren is sounding the alarm, it is up to us to contact our senators and representative ( I did, my e mails to +U.S. Senator Tim Kaine D VA, Sen +Mark Warner D VA and +Congresswoman Barbara Comstock r VA after this article and I also posted them on their facebook pages (pending approval) ) and demand congress keep the CFPB open, unfettered and fully funded. Contact information for your senators can be found here and your representative here. This from +AlterNet ......

Elizabeth Warren Breaks Down the Biggest Trump Scandal You Haven't Heard About

By Alexandra Rosenmann / AlterNet

February 9, 2017

Warren sounds off on the president's plan to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mitch McConnell may have cut her off on the Senate floor, but Elizabeth Warren refuses to be silenced. Two days after becoming an internet meme, the Massachusetts senator sat down with Attn to discuss an underreported but no less pressing Trump scandal.

"What Donald Trump wants to do is fire one of the most important financial cops and then say to the American people, you keep walking down this dark alley and, you know, what happens is what happens," Warren revealed.

The cop in question is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray. Cordray's term ends in July 2018, but Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is encouraging Trump to "immediately fire" the director. 

"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which didn't even exist before the financial crisis, [prevents Americans from being] cheated on mortgages and credit cards and the things that ultimately blew up our economy," Warren explained.

The CFPD was created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform act and specifically helped combat home mortgage scams. Now that Trump wants to scrap the legislation, Republicans such as Rep. Hensarling along with Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska say Cordray must go. 

"The financial services industry, the giant banks figured out, 'Whoa, there's money to be made here... by selling, lyin' and cheatin' scammin' mortgages,' and that's what they did," Warren said.

"They sold them in big numbers and for a little while it was, you know, like a sugar high," she continued. "Housing prices went up, the economy went crazy, and then of course it all blew up. And they not only cost people their homes and cost them their financial security, they cost millions of people across this country their jobs and their savings. They really created the economy that made it so hard for young people to come in and get good and decent jobs and be able to move ahead."

Warren became the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in September 2010, but was not nominated to direct the agency for fear she would not pass confirmation. President Obama nominated Cordray instead 10 months later. 

According to Warren, the agency functions as "a cop on the beat, to [provide] a level playing field" and "Donald Trump just started the process to try to gut the rules." 

MY e mails to Senators Kaine and Warner

Republicans in Congress want the CFPB shut down. We, the American people, need the protection from the fraud, cheating and excess fees Wall Street and the bank-financial cabal would subject us to without the CFPB and the Dodd-Frank regulations now in place. I expect you to stand strong with the American people and Sen Elizabeth Warren and keep the CFPB open, unfettered and fully funded. Do not be a DINO, we need you to more than ever to protect us from the Trump-Pence administration and the Republican controlled Congress. 
Sincerely,
Craig Schwanke

Ashburn, VA
MY e mail to Rep Comstock
Many Republicans in Congress want the CFPB shut down. We, the American people, need the protection from the fraud, cheating and excess fees Wall Street and the bank-financial cabal would subject us to without the CFPB and the Dodd-Frank regulations now in place. I expect you to stand strong with the American people and Sen Elizabeth Warren and keep the CFPB open, unfettered and fully funded. Do not be rubber stamp Republican, we need you to more than ever to protect us from the greed of Wall Street and the bank-financial cabal, those who brought us the 2008 recession. 
Sincerely,
Craig Schwanke

Ashburn, VA

Wall Street's Latest Manufactured Outrage 10JUN11

MORE proof wall street and the banking / financial industry can not be trusted. The propaganda campaign they are launching is not for the benefit, and offers no help or protection for the American home buyer. It DOES make mortgage lenders accept responsibility and risk for the loans they make, and so reduces the chance of another financial meltdown because of the shameless greed of wall street and the banking / financial industry. This from Mother Jones....

The Fed and other regulators have proposed a set of rules that would put new limits on home mortgages: Borrowers would have to put 20 percent down and would have to show that their mortgage payments would amount to no more than 28 percent of their gross monthly income. The Washington Post makes this sound like doomsday:

Nearly three out of every five U.S. borrowers who bought homes last year would not have met the proposed restriction on total debt, according to an analysis by mortgage research firm CoreLogic....If the rules were in effect now, Todd Pearson of Ashburn predicts he'd be shut out of the market. Pearson wants to sell his house and buy another in Chevy Chase. He says he has no debts other than his mortgage. But he figures his mortgage payment alone would exceed the threshold proposed by the new rules.

You have to admit, these rules do sound pretty tough. In fact, they'd pretty much shut down the entire mortgage industry. So what's going on?
Answer: Lots of financial industry whining. As it turns out, regulators aren't saying that mortgage originators can't make any kind of loan they want. 20 percent down, 10 percent down, 5 percent down, whatever. Go to town. What they are saying is that if mortgage loans are bundled up into securities and resold, they want the issuer of the security to retain 5 percent of the total offering. That's part of Dodd-Frank, and it's designed to give issuers an incentive to make sure their mortgage securities aren't full of toxic waste. If they have to keep a piece of the action on their own books, they'll want to make sure their securities are safe and sound.
However, there's an exception: If your mortgages all conform to the new rules, you don't have to retain that 5 percent chunk. That's all that's happening. You can make any kind of loan you want, but if it's anything other than super safe, you have to keep a piece of it on your books.
The financial industry is in an uproar over this, claiming that it would shut millions of people out of the housing market. That's nonsense. Neither Todd Pearson nor anyone else is being denied a loan on whatever terms they can get one. All that's happening is that when their mortgages get bundled up and resold, the ABS issuer has to keep a 5 percent stake. The mortgage industry is on a rampage over this, claiming that it will dramatically raise the cost of mortgages, but that's nonsense too. Being forced to keep a 5 percent stake probably will have an impact on ABS issuers—that's the whole intent, after all—but the financial impact is almost certainly pretty minuscule. Tom Lawler at Calculated Risk roughly estimates it at perhaps 20 basis points at most on a nonconforming loan. In other words, the rate on nonconforming mortgages might go up 0.2 percentage points. At most. Something on the order of 0.1 percentage points or less is probably closer to reality.
This is yet another case of the financial industry biting the hand that's trying to help it out. The truth is that it would probably be a good idea to require ABS issuers to retain a 5 percent stake in every mortgage bundle they sell. But Dodd-Frank threw them a bone in the form of an exemption for loans that were transparently high quality and virtually certain not to default. And the result? Endless whining, a massive lobbying effort, and glossy four-color demagoguery about hardworking middle-class families being shut out of the mortgage market. Welcome to Wall Street.

Front page image: A GS/Fotopedia

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Elizabeth Warren Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau New Consumer Agency Is Frightfully Necessary -- And Late 29DEZ10

IF there is one person in the government that has earned the total trust of average Americans it is Elizabeth Warren......and her is what she has to say on the latest foreclosure news and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau....
No one has missed the headlines: Haphazard and possibly illegal practices at mortgage-servicing companies have called into question home foreclosures across the nation.
The latest disclosures are deeply troubling, but they should not come as a big surprise. For years, both individual homeowners and consumer advocates sounded alarms that foreclosure processes were riddled with problems.
While federal and state investigators are still examining exactly what has gone wrong and why, two things are clear.
First, several financial services companies have already admitted that they used "robo-signers," false declarations, and other workarounds to cut corners, creating a legal nightmare that will waste time and money that could have been better spent to help this economy recover. Mortgage lenders will spend millions of dollars retracing their steps, often with the same result that families who cannot pay will lose their homes.
Second, this mess might well have been avoided if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had been in place just a few years ago.
The new consumer agency is one of the signature accomplishments of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Obama this summer.
The new agency will take on oversight responsibilities that had been scattered among several federal agencies, and it will be a new cop on the beat that will end big loopholes in the regulatory system.
For the first time, banks and non-bank lenders (such as payday lenders, check cashers and mortgage brokers) will be subject to the same federal oversight to ensure that they are all playing by the same rules-no more turning sideways and slipping through the regulatory cracks.
Lost in much of the back-and-forth over wrongful foreclosures is the question of whether the scandal could have been prevented. The answer is yes.
The practices now under investigation took root and grew because there was no single federal regulator with both the responsibility and the tools to look out for consumers.
Had it existed, the new consumer agency could have stopped these problems before they multiplied. Many of the failures already admitted were not sophisticated scams that had been carefully concealed. By enforcing existing laws and involving state authorities early on, the agency could have made sure that the law was respected. No one would need to wonder whether the world of borrowing and lending works only one way: Families have to follow the legal rules, but the rules are optional for big banks.
Once it is fully operational, the new consumer agency will have supervisory authority over all large mortgage servicers. It will be able to examine them on a regular basis to make sure they follow the rules. If those servicers decide it is cheaper or faster to circumvent federal law, the consumer agency will have the tools to hold them accountable.
No one will be allowed to break the rules without triggering a strong and prompt federal response.
Currently, the federal interagency foreclosure task force, including the members of the Financial Services Oversight Council, is working along with the state Attorneys General to get to the bottom of these problems. The implementation team for the new consumer agency is also working to assemble and coordinate teams to deal with servicing and other issues.
These efforts are critical, but there is more work to do: We must ensure this kind of scandal-or some close cousin-does not happen again.
A mortgage is the biggest financial commitment most Americans will make in a lifetime, and the toll on Florida has been especially heavy and the need for oversight particularly apparent. A few weeks ago, I watched proceedings in a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure court and saw firsthand the painful outcomes for numerous families.
Unfair servicing practices can worsen a family's already difficult economic situation, and the injury echoes from the family to the community and ultimately throughout the economy. Cops on the beat can stop problems before the damage spreads. If there ever was any doubt that the new consumer agency is necessary, the latest foreclosure developments should put that to rest.